


actually, you said

by electrumqueen



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-24 21:40:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6167668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electrumqueen/pseuds/electrumqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The point was: they had had a fight, and Robert was sleeping on the sofa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	actually, you said

**Author's Note:**

> continuing to relive the Siken Days we all had, i guess? (i'm mortified, don't worry.)
> 
> thanks to j for never letting me give up! even tho we both looked at this one through our fingers, i think.

_-_

 

 

_Love, for you, is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s terrifying. No one will ever want to sleep with you._

 

-

 

They had had a fight, about something stupid - about Chas, maybe, or about Robert lying about getting involved in something dodgy, or about Aaron accidentally getting in a fight to save Liv's skin. It didn't actually matter what this particular fight was about: they all sort of blurred together, endlessly, and they all ended up being Robert’s fault because Robert was the one who, invariably, escalated things that final level too far. Robert always went to a knife fight and brought a fucking nuke.

The point was: they had had a fight, and Robert was sleeping on the sofa. They had sorted it eventually, Robert's venom bleeding out, Aaron peeling himself off the wall he’d punched. Robert had tried to touch Aaron's shoulder, like, _I'm sorry,_ but Aaron's stomach had hurt and he was just fucking tired of it.

It was Robert. Robert wasn't going anywhere. That was the truth of it now, deep in Aaron's soul: sure, there was probably something Robert could do that would make Aaron leave, but he couldn't think of it now and it certainly wasn't this.

Right now, though -  right now Robert could fucking well sleep on the fucking sofa, and Aaron was going to sleep in their bed alone and it would be fine; he'd certainly done it enough while Robert had a _wife_. (And that was a fight still, even now; he tried not to bring it up but sometimes it slipped out, like Robert being cruel about his scars or about Jackson or about any of the other toxic things that Robert spat out, corrosive, when he was backed into a corner.)

The point was: they had had a fight. And Aaron had already forgiven him, really, because it was Robert fucking Sugden and Robert loved him, Robert made him brave and bright and strong, when he wasn't being a massive fucking git and shit wasn't falling from his lips every time he opened his mouth. But Aaron wasn't going to sleep with him, not tonight, and the sofa was fine. Sort of lumpy, which Robert would complain about endlessly given the chance, but it wasn't the floor. Aaron could have made him sleep on the floor, if he'd wanted.

In the morning Aaron would go downstairs and make himself a tea and Robert a coffee, and Robert would roll over with his hair sticking up and the blanket rucked up over his thighs and Aaron would come round and kiss his hair, his forehead, his mouth. Robert would say, "Am I forgiven?" and Aaron would say, "You're a fucking tosser, d’you know that," and hand him his mug, and it would all be all right.

 

But right now Aaron was lying alone in bed, and he was a little cold. It was a decent sized bed: Robert had bought it when they were getting back together, early days. Victoria had said, 'what do you think you're doing with my box room, Rob?', but Aaron had helped him carry it in and she'd lit up the way she always did at the idea that someone might have been stupid enough to let her brother con them into something looking even remotely serious, and let them do it.

The sheets were cool and when he rolled over there was no Robert to catch him, Robert with his long arms and his fucking furnace of a body. It was quiet and Aaron was tired and angry, but he missed Robert. Moonlight fell from the window onto the bed, onto Robert's bare pillow and the empty space of his bedside table.

Aaron sighed, and got up, and went downstairs.

 

The stairs creaked: these old houses. He kept his pace as light as he could but still, when he got down to the living room, Robert was sitting up in his nest of blankets, blinking. "Aaron?" He was shirtless and his hair stuck up in all directions.

"Just wanted a water," Aaron said, softly. "Go back to sleep, Robert."

He went to the kitchen and turned on the tap; got a chipped mug out of the cabinet and stood there, looking out into the moonlit garden while the water ran. He raised the mug to his mouth and drank and then turned the water off.

When he turned around Robert was there, his feet bare on the tile floor, and his eyes gleaming faintly in the dark.

"I couldn't sleep,” he offered.

He was looking at Aaron like he always looked at Aaron. Like Aaron was sun and moon and stars, everything worth anything in the history of the universe.

When they fought it made Aaron's skin itch: Robert, claiming he knew what was best; Robert, who somewhere deep in himself believed - or had once believed, anyway - that it was the fact that Robert loved him that made Aaron important. Robert, who sometimes thought of Aaron as a precious thing, to be insulated from all the real difficulties of actual decision making, which ought to be left to a rational person: Robert.

Now Aaron's blood had cooled and it was different: reassuring, gratifying. The kind of thing that spiked his blood and made him breathe faster.

The kind of thing that reminded him he had fallen in love.

“Water?” Aaron offered, waving the mug in Robert’s general direction.

Robert took a step towards him, and paused. He was only wearing trackpants, which might have been Aaron’s; in their bed he slept in underwear, but they lived with Victoria and Adam, and Adam loved to whinge about seeing too much. The trackpants  -  definitely Aaron’s, with a little Liverpool logo on the stripe - hung low on Robert’s hips, leaving his hipbones bare. “Yeah, okay.”

Aaron filled the mug and handed it to him. Their fingers brushed and Aaron dropped his head, looked down at Robert’s hand, all pale and free of callous. Different worlds, he had thought, the first time Robert kissed him.

“Aaron,” Robert said.

Aaron looked at the mug. It was one of Victoria’s and had a fluffy cat printed on the side. The cat was washing its paws, and looked faintly put upon.

Robert tracked his gaze, sighed, drank from the mug in one smooth gulp. Aaron followed the line of his throat and took back the mug, pressing the pads of his fingers over the cat’s face.

“I love you.” Robert stepped forward. Relentless.

“We’ve already done that,” Aaron said. He put the mug in the sink; it was Adam’s turn to do the washing up, anyway. “You’ve apologized, I’ve apologized. It’s fine.”

“I’m on the sofa,” Robert said, raising an eyebrow. “It’s got _lumps,_ Aaron.”

Aaron rolled his eyes. “Princess,” he said. “You deserve it.”

“I miss you,” Robert said. Faintly petulant, but in a good natured sort of way.

“It’s been like three hours,” Aaron said. He felt himself drift forward: one step, then two. It was Robert. It would always be Robert. 

“That’s a long time,” Robert said. His teeth were very white. He was holding himself still, the edges of his mouth just upturned, like he was holding back a smile.

The air was always like this around them. Tight, tense, ready.

Aaron sighed. “Pillock,” he said, closing the space between them, and then they were kissing; Robert’s hands on the sides of Aaron’s face, Robert hot and long and insistent against him.

“I love you too,” Aaron said, giving in, mouth pressed up against Robert’s. His pulse was up, now; fucking Robert. Nobody else made his heart race like this. Nobody else touched him and made every cell in his body sing.

Robert smiled against Aaron’s lips, pressing a kiss like a bite, and then another. “Good.”

He backed Aaron against the counter and held him there with the span of his body, the mismatched height of him that Aaron would never in a million years admit he liked. He put one hand round the small of Aaron’s back but left the other on Aaron’s jaw, keeping his face tipped up so Robert could kiss him.

Aaron settled his hands on Robert’s hips and let him do it. His skin was hot and the muscles of him tight and when Aaron rubbed his thumbs over Robert's hipbones, he shuddered.

Robert Sugden: an unstoppable force. Unless Aaron decided to stop him. They’d learned that the hard way.

“Aaron,” Robert said, dipping his head to kiss Aaron’s throat, his shoulder. He said Aaron’s name like some people said prayers.

“Upstairs,” Aaron said.

“I missed my bed,” Robert said, smiling. He was hard against Aaron’s thigh, insistent. “I missed having you in it.”

God, Aaron wanted him. “Our bed,” he said, swaying into Robert's chest, his throat, his steady hands.“Not yours.”

Robert paused. It took Aaron a moment, dazed from the force of him, to realize Robert was smiling, a big broad thing that stretched across his whole face. “Yeah,” he said. “Ours.”

 

In the months they’d spent sneaking around Victoria’s house while they fumbled their way back together, they had learned that two people on the stairs at the same time was asking to wake up everyone else. So Robert kissed Aaron at the foot of the stairwell and slid his hand into the front of Aaron’s boxers, Aaron’s blood thrumming so hard he thought about just falling to his knees, there and then.

“Go,” Robert said, at odds with the way his hand curled around Aaron’s dick and squeezed, but that was fucking Robert for you, always a contradiction. Never met a situation he couldn’t complicate further.

Aaron breathed out hard through his nose and bit at Robert’s neck, hot and hard and messy, the way he liked it. Now that it was all right to like it, now that it was all right for there to be marks.

“Fuck,” Robert hissed, dropping his head back, eyelashes fluttering. “Aaron, fuck.”

Aaron grinned, all teeth, he could feel it. He felt wild. Robert made him like this.

“Upstairs,” he said. He took the stairs one at a time, deliberate. The weight of Robert’s gaze hung on his shoulders, on his body. A promise.

 

“Nice view,” Robert said, reaching the landing. He had that smirk on, the one Aaron liked and hated in equal parts.

Aaron shoved his shoulder and then kissed him. They were both painfully, breathtakingly awake.

Robert let himself be moved, let Aaron drag him down the hall easily, to the little room at the end of the hall. One day soon they would move out of it, but things were working: none of them in the whole village were keen to change something that was going right, for once.

Robert was smiling; he was breathing hard. He had that look in his eyes that he got before he’d call Aaron beautiful, gorgeous, best in the world.

 

Finally they were in the bedroom. Robert shut the door behind them and pulled Aaron against him, got one thigh between Aaron’s and yanked at the hem of his t-shirt. “Get this off,” he said, urgent, impatient, “come on, Aaron, come on.”

Aaron tilted his head to one side and let him hang there for a moment, Robert’s eyes gone hot and desperate and his fingers scrabbling at Aaron’s top. Then he leaned in and kissed Robert and dragged his beard along the side of Robert’s throat, where he had bitten it. It would leave a mark tomorrow. Robert would touch it and smile, and shoot Aaron a filthy look - probably in the middle of the Woolie, knowing Aaron's luck - but that was quite enough thinking about his mother, thank you very much.

“Fuck,” Robert said, moaning. His head hit the doorframe.

Aaron laughed and caught him, one hand cradling the back of his head. “Shh,” he said. “You’ll wake Vic and Adam.”

“Fuck Adam,” Robert said, vehement. His whole body had gone taught, strung tight. Vibrating, with how much he wanted Aaron. What a rush.

“I’d rather you didn’t.” Aaron got his hand into Robert’s - his - trackies and shoved them down, feeling the heat of Robert’s dick pulse against his fingers. He was already slick. “Fuck’s sake, that's my best trackies, Rob.”

Robert laughed, hitching his hips forward. His dick jumped against Aaron’s palm. Dizzily, Aaron wanted it inside him. “That’s what you get for having a best pair of trackies, Livesy,” he said. “Didn’t exactly think I was getting laid tonight, anyway.”

That was too much like talking about the row, so Aaron didn’t; instead he slipped to his knees and fastened his hands on Robert’s hips and took the head of his dick into his mouth. The taste of him, salt, bitter, burst across his tongue.

Robert tangled his hands in the shoulders of Aaron’s top. “Fuck. I love you.” Aaron loved the way his voice got: thready, out of control. Robert tried so hard to be in control of things but Aaron could so easily undo that, rip him to shreds. Robert had been afraid of it for a long time but now he wasn’t. Aaron liked it, getting to see it, getting to know.

Aaron sucked him off hard and messy and fast, one hand on his inner thigh, nails leaving little marks. He was good at this, and he was good at Robert.

He looked up, through his eyelashes. Robert’s face was flushed and red and Aaron loved him, christ, Aaron loved him so much it left him off his game, defenseless.

Sometimes he thanked God, in whom he did not believe, that Robert had been gone from the village by the time Aaron was sixteen and volatile. Christ - that would have been an explosion not even worth recovering.

Their eyes locked.

Robert shoved his hips forward and stopped himself. His dick throbbed in Aaron’s mouth.

Aaron hummed. Did that thing with his hand that Robert liked.

Robert caught a hand in his hair and yanked him off, abruptly. “Bed,” he said. His eyes were sharp, like his voice.

Aaron licked at the edge of his mouth, watching Robert’s gaze drop to his lips. “Yeah?”

“Now,” Robert said.

 

It had been Aaron’s show and now it was Robert’s. Aaron let himself be pressed into the mattress, grinning as Robert threw the trackpants across the room and settled onto Aaron's thighs, one hand catching his wrists together to pin them above his head.

“I love you,” Robert said, staring at him, fixed and bright and hot with want. “I want to fuck you.”

Aaron made a show of thinking about it. Ground his hips in a little circle against the wet drag of Robert’s cock for the way that Robert’s eyes flashed and the bare long line of him shuddered, desperate, desiring. “Do you?”

“ _Aaron,_ ” Robert said. His free hand pushed at the hem of Aaron’s top and he ducked his head, kissed at Aaron’s belly, all the way up to his nipple. It was dark. There wasn’t anything to see.

Even if there was, Robert had seen it all. Robert loved him. All of him.

Robert had his own bullet hole: small and pale and enough to make Aaron ill.

“Okay,” Aaron said. He stretched up his arms so Robert could yank the t-shirt up. It tangled around his wrists but when Robert went to pull it away Aaron said, “It’s all right, leave it. Saves you a hand.”

Robert groaned, low in his throat. “That kind of mood?”

“You’re the one in it,” Aaron said. He bared his teeth - a grin - and rocked his dick against Robert’s. Even through the loose fabric of his boxers they both hissed at the electric jolt of contact.

“Fuck,” Robert said. He kissed Aaron, biting at his lower lip and then his throat, and then one of the scars nearish his heart. “Front or back?”

“Like this,” Aaron said. He thought about adding something soppy - like how he wanted to see Robert’s face as he came, how he wanted Robert to have the proof of what it was that he did to Aaron, for Aaron, always - but Robert had a stupid ego anyway. “This is good.”

It took Robert a moment to go for the bedside table - they’d lost the lube in the back of a drawer, Jesus, what timing - and while he did that, bent over, muttering to himself, Aaron let himself look: Robert, gorgeous in the moonlight, with his shock of pale hair and the muscles in his thighs, his forearms, his vanity abs. The flash of his teeth as he swore. The curve of his arse, the red flush of his dick, hard and proudly undignified.

“Hurry it up, Sugden,” Aaron heckled, wriggling himself up the bed to get his head on the nearest pillow. “Or I’ll have to take care of this myself.”

“You wouldn’t,” Robert said, emerging with the little tube, laughing with victory. He crawled across the mattress and kissed Aaron again, kissed him and kissed him while he settled his thighs either side of Aaron’s body and peeled off Aaron's shorts with easy familiarity. There was a thump: pile on the floor, probably. The morning’s problem. “You know nobody gets you like I do.”

“Tosser,” Aaron said, obligingly lifting his hips so Robert could press his palm to Aaron’s dick, finally, fuck, _finally._ “Took you long enough, mate.”

“Not your _mate,_ ” Robert said, hotly. He bit at Aaron’s lip, curling his hand around Aaron’s dick and thumbing along the head, that spot that made Aaron make this fucking - embarrassing sound, and spread his legs wider, and hitch into Robert’s hand like he needed it, like he needed Robert. He was smiling. Aaron could feel the curl of it against his lips.

“Whatever,” Aaron gritted out, turning his head to one side. He could feel Robert’s dick against his side, wet from his mouth, from Robert’s desire; he wanted it in him. “Robert-”

“Shhh,” Robert said, pausing to look down at him. He must have looked like something - flushed and wild and in need - because Robert gentled his voice, slowed the pace of his hand on Aaron’s dick. “Shh, babe. I’ll take care of you. Don’t I always take care of you?”

“Fuck,” Aaron said, tight like a live wire. “Fuck-”

The first touch: Robert kissing his mouth, pushing at his thighs until they were further apart, pushing his way in. He always used too much lube. It spilled all over Aaron’s thighs and ruined their sheets: they’d gone through three sets in the past month.

“Making you sleep in the wet spot,” he muttered. Or tried to, as Robert worked his fingers into Aaron, relentlessly, inexorably, while the weight of him kept Aaron pushed into the mattress and the t-shirt tangled around Aaron’s wrists kept him still, and he lost what breath he’d had before.

“Did you say something?” Robert teased.

Second finger. Robert never played fucking fair: he always went right for that spot and lit it up, recklessly, ruthlessly. Aaron wasn’t quite stretched enough but Robert knew he liked the burn of it, just on the edge.

Aaron groaned, tipped back his throat. _Robert, Robert, Robert._

“Love you,” Robert said. “Aaron, christ, I love you.” He still said it like it hurt to say. But it didn’t stop him saying it: all the time, whenever he could, and so Aaron loved him for it.

Third finger and then Robert was rocking back onto his heels, both of them groaning with the loss of him. He had one hand on his dick and the other twisting inside Aaron and then that was gone, too, and Aaron keened with the emptiness, couldn’t stop himself before he said, “ _Pl_ _ease, Robert, please._ ”

Robert froze - that startled, off-balance look he sometimes got, still - but he pulled himself back and kissed Aaron’s shoulder and then got himself in.

And for all the things that had ever been wrong with them - well. It had never been this. You could say what you wanted about Robert Sugden, and Aaron had and Aaron would, but this -

Robert’s cock in him, Robert’s mouth on his, Robert’s weight on him -

There was a reason Aaron had made so many dumb fucking decisions about Robert Sugden, even before he’d gone and fallen in love.

Aaron braced his hands against the headboard. “Still got it, do you?”

“You know I do,” Robert hissed, and fucked him hard, fast: everything Aaron wanted, everything Aaron had ever wanted, right here, the two of them in this bed. “You know I do, Aaron.”

Aaron grinned and rocked back up to meet him. “Shut up,” he said. “You talk too fucking much.”

His thighs burned; his chest burned. Sweat was in his eyes and his heart was going too fucking fast, for sure. His arse was going to be fucking sore tomorrow. Above him, Robert’s eyes were blue like the heart of a flame and his dick was, honestly, reducing Aaron to something not even human - just impulse, energy, overwhelming desire.

Robert’s arms were on either side of him, caging him in, but it was good. It was Robert, all around him, inside him, taking him apart, making him whole.

 

“I’m sorry,” Robert said, going abruptly still. He bit down on his lower lip and looked at Aaron in the way he did: that enormous, all encompassing way. The way where Aaron was like a flood, and Robert didn’t know how to stand up against him. Before, it had made him furious and violent and awful, but now it was just there. Just a fact, like the blue of the sky or that if you dropped an apple it would fall. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I never mean to hurt you.”

Aaron surged up and kissed him; shucked the t-shirt from around his wrists and caught Robert’s face in his hands. _I love you, I love you, I love you._

Together they got the rhythm back, rocking together in the middle of the mattress, Aaron’s calves wrapped around Robert’s back, Robert’s hands tangled in Aaron’s hair and braced against the curve of his hip. Not what it had been, but Aaron didn’t want to stop kissing Robert, and the press of Robert’s abs against his dick was good, tight, great, and the way Robert pressed up inside of him -

Robert dropped the hand from his hip and got that on Aaron’s dick and that was even better.

“I love you,” Robert said, and Aaron came, startled, the force of it punched out of him.

“Fuck,” he said, pushed Robert back and rode him till Robert gasped, eyes fluttering shut, and said Aaron’s name.

 

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Robert said. His hair was standing up, like he’d been static shocked on one of those educational programs Debs and Andy were always trying to make Sarah and Jack watch.

Aaron finger-combed it back, out of the way, then got bored and mussed it up again. “Really,” he said. “Your little sister’s kitchen not doing it for you? Not sexy enough?”

Robert laughed, hiding the shape of it against Aaron’s shoulder. They had both avoided the wet patch but it meant they were curled up like commas on Aaron's side of the bed. Aaron couldn't bring himself to mind. “Your cousin’s garage is more my style.”

“Maybe if you’d stop fucking me off,” Aaron said, pulling Robert in, close, kissing his forehead. “You wouldn’t have to sleep on the fucking sofa so much.”

“No chance,” Robert said, getting one hand in Aaron’s own hair, which was perfectly fine, thank you, not in his eyes at all. It did feel nice, the way Robert stroked him, so he didn’t move. “Absolutely none.”

Aaron ran his hand along Robert’s back. “Yeah, didn’t think so,” he said. “I’m getting used to it, though. It’s all right.”

“Yeah,” Robert said. “All right.”

They laughed at each other, and then Aaron put his arm over Robert’s broad chest and his face into his pillow and fell asleep.

 

Robert woke him up kicking, but Aaron draped one leg over his calves and that put a stop to that. It was second nature by now: he barely registered it, just murmured, _love you Rob,_ and closed his eyes again.

 

In the morning, Aaron pushed Robert’s arm off his shoulder; he got out of bed and went downstairs, to put the kettle on, and then wandered out into the living room. The sun spilled across the sofa, across the rumpled blankets and dead giveaway single pillow.

While he waited for the water to boil he folded up the blankets and put them in the cabinet next to the couch, and then he made himself a cup of tea and Robert a cup of coffee and went back upstairs.

Robert, ninety percent still asleep, took the mug from his hand and blinked, and then laughed so hard he spilled the coffee all over their already ruined sheets. The cat washing its paws glared out of the chipped ceramic accusingly at them both.

“You're a fucking tosser, did you know that?” Aaron said, and kissed him.

 

**Author's Note:**

> title + text from "litany in which certain things are crossed out".


End file.
